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Mule ESB vs OpenESB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Mule ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
OpenESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of Mule ESB is 20.1%, down from 22.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenESB is 1.5%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

PurbayanSaha - PeerSpot reviewer
Has API-led architecture and provides a unique, user-friendly, and scalable architecture for hosting APIs
There's room for improvement in multi-file transfer functionality. It's not convenient when using MuleSoft, and it should have better capability for handling large amounts of data. For example, applications like GoAnywhere can handle huge chunks of data, so the tool should also have something to facilitate that aspect of integration.
PP
Easily define choreography and orchestration with this process-oriented solution
We provide contracted services for our customers that include coordinating with providers and implementing the solution.  A current project includes using the solution to deploy 200 microservices.  The process-oriented solution allows you to define choreography and orchestration. This feature…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is that it's programmer-friendly, so it's very easy to develop APIs."
"I like that it's user-friendly. Compared to other ESBs, I find it easier to use. I like it better than other ESBs. I like the connectors, which make calling the APIs through the routers easier."
"The most valuable feature is the Salesforce integration."
"Easy connectivity and easy integration."
"Mule ESB has a user-friendly design, and everything is in one place. The API and architecture are popular right now. Also, MuleSoft has a large and supportive online community."
"I am impressed with the product's connectors and scalability."
"The most beneficial features of Mule ESB are the control plane and runtime plane."
"The solution offers multiple deployment options."
"The process-oriented solution allows you to define choreography and orchestration."
"OpenESB pushes the organization to clearly define service boundaries and interfaces. So it motives the business and the development teams to clearly define their business services and processes they want to implement. OpenESB supports fine and coarse-grain granularity for the services and supports top-down and bottom-up approaches for the services, processes definition, and composition."
"One of the most valuable features is being able to implement business processes while keeping track of the design from BPMN to a BPEL Implementation."
"The core is very stable."
 

Cons

"From an improvement perspective, there should be fewer coding challenges for users in Mule ESB."
"Mule ESB could be more user-friendly. I think users must learn about the architecture before they start coding. The price could be better. In the next release, I would like to see an EDIFACT integration."
"The current version will not be supported for much longer."
"Documentation is cryptic, product releases are far too frequent, and upgrades become troublesome."
"Mule ESB isn't as secure as IBM. Financial companies go with IBM for that reason."
"Community editions need more attention."
"Limitation on external subscribers to listen to the messages on the bus."
"One area that could be improved is the way that policies are propagated when APIs are moved from one environment to another. It's an issue, but when you develop and test the rest APIs in a lower environment and need to move them, there's a propagation process. This process moves certain aspects of the APIs, like the basic features. But when we move them, the policies don't always move with them. The policies should be able to move so we don't have to redo them manually. There are some APIs we use, but it's a bit tedious."
"The documentation needs to be better."
"Cloud deployment is weak and needs to be improved."
"Regarding its management, a web console being able to synchronize distributed instances would be great."
"The documentation of the product must be improved. It could be tricky to find the right documentation on a topic since the documentation is spread in many places. I advise the new joiner to contact the community to get entry points and additional documentation. Tutorial and Video must be present to take up the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Mule ESB is a costly solution. We pay approximately $80,000 annually for the system. The cost of the number of instances, annual subscription, and cloud hosting services are expensive."
"This product is cheaper than some offered by other vendors, although there is a problem because you have to pay for some third-party adapters."
"Mule ESB is an expensive solution."
"I think the price is very high. If you use TIBCO BW, the license is for the CPU usage, then the IPS, and support. I also think the license for the product is a one-time expense."
"You will not get any support from Mule ESB's team for the tool's community edition...You can get support with the licensed version of Mule ESB."
"The solution is expensive."
"This is expensive. In my next project, we had to go to other vendor."
"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"There are two versions. The first is the community version, which is free and contains the last part of the feature, but if you want to get the Enterprise version, you'll have to pay €60,000 which covers support and two instances on production."
"The cost for the prediction instrument is high because it is charged per instances based on prediction, but the rest of the solution is free."
"The Community Edition is a full product you can use in production, it does not have limitations like other alternatives."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Hospitality Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Migration from IBM Integration Bus to Mulesoft ESB for a large enterprise tech services company
I was previously part of the Oracle SOA/OSB development team. In my current capacity I architected solutions using MuleSoft Anypoint Platform on cloud / on-premises and hybrid modes and on PCE/RTF ...
IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB - which to choose?
Our team ran a comparison of IBM’s Integration Bus vs. Mule ESB in order to determine what sort of ESB software was the best fit for our organization. Ultimately we decided to choose IBM Integratio...
What do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Mule ESB vs. OpenESB and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.